


The Earth and Heaven

by Schwoozie



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria Safe-Zone, Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim, Alternate Universe - The Last of Us, Canon Compliant, Denial of Feelings, Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Prison, Romance, Sleepy Sex, Step-siblings, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 11,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1985844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Beth/Daryl drabbles, all under 1,200 words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Winter

Daryl forgets how to breathe when he sees her—haloed in fire by the dying sun, falling snow like embers from a blaze as they tangle in the lattice of her hair, semi-automatic black and vacuous against the field of white. She’d convinced Rick all on her own that she was capable of guarding the camp; went behind Daryl’s back to do it, because no matter how much he believes in her, he can’t put aside the protective streak her hope instilled in him.

Hope is like a drug, Daryl thinks sometimes; the more you have, the more desperate you are to keep it.

She doesn’t stir as he comes up behind her except to lean back into his chest; he can feel the edges of her smile when he presses his cheek to hers. His hands slide inside her coat to lace over her stomach, pulling her back into him as they watch the snow fall.

“’S quiet,” she murmurs, head pillowed on his shoulder. “You got Judy to sleep?”

“Rick did,” Daryl says, just as softly. Where her voice is a whistle, his is a rumble, vibrating through the air and cloth between them, connecting their bodies in the icy cold. “He’s getting’ good at it too.” He presses a smirk into her hair. “Pretty soon he won’t need you at all.”

He feels Beth smile; not from the curve of her lips, but from the press of her hands over his; the way she smells and breathes his name.

“Guess nobody needs no one, huh?”

“I need you,” Daryl whispers, kissing the shell of her ear.

Beth chuckles. “Well, duh.”

Daryl growls and yanks her against him, digging his fingers into her stomach. She gasps, and the air emerges from her mouth in a puff of mist. She turns her head so he can kiss her cheek, soft. She doesn’t lose her grip on the gun.

“I need you too,” she replies.

Far off across the field, they watch a walker stumble through the snow, limbs slow and sluggish. They let it be. They’ll still be around in the morning.


	2. Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl gets hurt. Beth gets annoyed.

“If you’d hold still, it wouldn’t hurt as much,” Beth chides, sliding her needle through the flesh that has yet to go numb.

She’s north of exasperated but not quite incensed, not like she was when he first came home from a run with blood spilling down his arm and a good sized gash in his shoulder. He’d assured her first off it wasn’t a bite—had hated the stricken look on her face, the way the blood drained from her pretty cheeks like it wanted to replace what his body lost. He’d reassured her, and she started yelling like he’d never seen her—not when he was being a jackass and certainly not since, in the quiet months they’ve spent in their clean white house. At first he’d been startled, then a bit amused—and then something else—something that came from her flushed cheeks and dilated eyes, the hot sting of her spitting gaze—but he isn’t thinking about that. That isn’t something that matters.

What matters is the way she looked at him when he took his shirt off for the first time in her presence, the first time since she and her daddy tended to a hole in his side. She knew what she would find there—had seen it as he slept, and scowled, and hurt, the days he spent in that bed, with thoughts of Merle making the old scars burn as fresh as the ones still forming.

When he took his shirt off, she did not turn away or face him with pity; she smiled at him. She took his hand, a brief press of palm to palm. She was proud.

And now all that pride is pressed into his side as she sews up the gash with neat little stitches. It stings like a bitch, but he’s had worse, and her hand is steady—it isn’t his fault that her presence makes him shiver and sweat all at once; that after months off the road and without need of body heat, he’s forgotten the press of her body and what it does to him, the way he stutters—but her breath is warm on his skin, and she’s doting on him like he matters.

“If I didn’t need to get you that girly stuff, this wouldn’t’a happened,” he growls, without bite.

“I told you I could handle it,” she says snippily, for once sounding her age. “You think just cause it’s my time of the month I can’t take care of myself–”

“You could barely move this mornin’ before we got painkillers into you,” Daryl snaps. She rolls her eyes. “Besides,” he grumbles, “the smell would’ve drawn walkers for miles.”

She tightens a stitch particularly harshly, and he does  _not_  yelp. “Uh-huh, and this wouldn’t, Mister ‘I tripped into barbed wire’?”

“’S different,” he grumbles, glancing up at her. Her eyes are two blue balls of determination, but her mouth is soft, relaxed, and very close. Daryl grunts and looks away.

“You have to take better care of yourself,” she says, tying off the stitches and moving from her knees on the couch to sitting beside him. He can still feel every inch of her bare arm against his. “What would I do without you, huh?” She nudges him, smiling. “Hunt for my own tampons?”

“You’d be fine,” he says, leaning back and closing his eyes. She’s leaning on his stitches, but he doesn’t say anything—takes comfort from the pain, if it means she’s here.

His eyes shoot open with the warm press of her lips on his cheek, fleeting but astounding, sinking deep beneath his skin to tattoo his jaw with her kiss. He looks at her through his fringe of hair. He can’t decipher this look on her face—it reminds him of the night he awoke from a nap to walk outside and find her spread eagled on the porch, sunning herself beneath the stars. He didn’t join her—just catalogued the shine of the moon on her face, filing it away with every other image in his heart that belonged to Beth Greene. Every time, he doesn’t know how he could fit any more—but she always makes room.

“Yeah, I would,” she says, taking his hand and leaning in close. “I’m better now though.”


	3. You and Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mission is simple; the intent is clear. Protect the girl. Get her to Washington. Save the world. The third, emptier silence at their campfire doesn't change that.
> 
> The Last of Us AU.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blame flippantninny on Tumblr, this is all her fault. Unbetaed, so let me know if there are major errors. I might continue this universe in a vignette style; I'll see where it goes.
> 
> Warning for major character death (not Daryl or Beth).

They sit on opposite sides of the campfire, not speaking.

It isn't like they're chatterboxes at the best of times. There have been days on the road with no noise but the chatter of squirrels and the zing of Daryl's crossbow that cuts them short, the pounding of boots on uneven ground. Even when they've found a house, or a cave, or an outcropping of relative safety, they don’t have many words. They don't need them, for what they have to do. The mission is simple; the intent is clear.

Protect the girl. Get her to Washington. Save the world.

The third, emptier silence at their campfire doesn't change that.

Daryl sneaks glances at Beth across the fire. When Andrea had shoved her into their care, she'd seemed such a little thing. Sparrow bones, apple mouth—the kind of girl made for summer picnics and high school dances, not a trip across the country with a couple of smugglers. The blood that pools in her pretty cheeks when Daryl insults her, that beats rapidly through her veins as they sprint through the forest, that dances away from bluing lips in the icy Georgia winter—that should be all it does. It shouldn't be able to turn back time, save the world.

 _Should ask if she was a cheerleader_ , Daryl thinks idly, turning the empty colt over in his hand. _Should ask something. Say something. She's never seen nothing like that before_.

But Daryl doesn't know what she's seen—doesn't know anything beyond her whole family's dead and she got bit and didn't die. Daryl isn't quite sure about the second part. He'd seen the bite scar, of course, livid and swelling on her pretty pink wrist—but when has Daryl put faith in anything that didn't come back to kick him in the ass? He'd seen the bite, sure—but a Dixon needs more than that to believe.

Rick believed. See where that got him.

“How much longer till we get to Washington?”

 _The princess speaks_.

“Couple'a weeks,” Daryl grunts, looking at her through the flames. She has her arms wrapped around her skinny knees, pulling them tight to her chest, staring into the fire like it holds the cure for this whole damn world. Like somewhere in those embers, the past twenty years never happened; Merle didn't abandon him and the dead didn't walk and Rick Grimes didn't lay down his life and fucking die. A world where Daryl isn't alone in the wilds with a scared teenager, down to his last bullet and, as usual, without a clue what to say.

“You think we'll make it?”

Daryl looks into the fire. All it does is burn.

“No.”

He feels her eyes on him.

“I think we will,” she declares.

“What do you know?” he mutters, stabbing the ground with his knife, seeing his brother, seeing Rick, seeing his momma's dead, burned out face.

“Rick thought we would,” she says quietly.

“Rick also thought you're a cause worth dying for.” Daryl blinks violently, shaking his head. “You got stuck with the wrong fucking man, girl.”

“I didn't,” she says quietly. Daryl snorts.

More strongly.

“I didn't.”

He sees her movements out of the corner of his eye—sees an owl litting off a branch from the corner of the other; hears the creak of the woods and the rattle of their warning system in the wind and the rapid beating of his own heart as she kneels down beside him, filthy blonde hair brushing his cheek.

“We survived this far,” she says, touching his shoulder. “We're going to make it. You and me. We can get there, Daryl.”

Daryl looks at her; at her apple cheeks, red from crying; the fierce lines of her jagged mouth, ripping like tidal waves through her skin.

 _Doesn't matter what she was before_ , Daryl thinks. _She's something now. She's something else_.

“You and me, huh?”

“You and me.”

She stares at him with her big blue eyes, lit up by the fire, the only lights in the entire world.

Her small hands reach out, take the colt and the knife from his large ones, set them aside. Takes the one closer to her, laces her fingers through. The pressure of her head on his shoulder is alien and wrong; he doesn't know what to do with the feeling it puts inside of him, the sense of an ache being filled. Rick might have known; Rick could have told him. Rick knew what to do, with pretty pink girls who still believed in the world, believed in him. She's the only one left who believes in him.

She doesn't say anything when his shoulders start shaking—shameful little tremors like hiccups in his bones. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to. Just squeezes his hand with hers, the pink little hand and its red running blood, the blood to save a million lives that Daryl doesn't care about, feels in his heart of hearts the world could do without. This world, his world, only needs one thing in it; and somewhere deep inside, he knows the same is true of hers.

They don't need the words. They never have.


	4. Don't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last of Us AU
> 
> After the long winter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kewi and Aimee's fault. Unbeta'd.

Her knees are pulled to her chest and her neck bent sharply against the arm of the couch, curled in the corner, pale and thin and smaller than he's ever seen her.

It takes Daryl several minutes to step into the room, but he would have needed to wait for the water to stop steaming anyway. As it is, his hands are an angry red from the heat of the bowl cradled between them. Over his arm is the only rag he could find that wasn't brown with dirt or blood. He hasn't had time to take off his boots and they leave muddy imprints on the desecrated carpet.

Her thighs tense against the movement of the couch as he settles beside her, and don’t unclench until his tentative hand brushes against her hip. There are multiple places where he can see through to the black under-armor beneath her jeans. Once they've gathered enough thread for emergencies he'll have to patch them for her.

He balances the bowl of water on his thighs, wincing a little at the residual twinge from his stomach wound. She'd done a good job patching him up, a real good job—he'll have to remember to tell her that—but he doubts he'll go a day in his life without the reminder of a piece of rebar sticking three feet out of his abdomen. He remembers so little about that day, the resulting winter—all he recalls is the cold, the biting, numbing cold that slid like glaciers through his veins even after she staunched the blood.

He remembers the cold, and he remembers her—warm, her warm hands on his face and prodding the inflamed edges of the wound, the warmth of her back when she slept pressed against his side at night. In his fever dreams he sometimes tried to reach for her; sometimes he thought he succeeded; to turn on his side and spoon up behind her, gather in that radiating warmth, the light that shone angel-like from the ruddy skin on the back of her neck. Sometimes he woke with her hair in his mouth and he'd close his lips around it to remember he was alive.

He wets the rag in the bowl, running it over his own hand to check the temperature before reaching over her. His movements are slow, gentle, some would say cumbersome as they flow from his long limbs—if it were fall and not winter she would laugh at how daintily he grasps her wrist, pulling her hand from in front of her face and drawing her forearm back to rest against her hip. He runs the rag over it, slowly, like a kitten's tongue, rubbing gently at the dead man's blood.

“I'm thinkin' we stay here a few days, rest up,” he rumbles, because even for a man used to silence, this is a different kind. “We ain't that far from DC now; I reckon we'll get there before summer, we move well enough.” He begins working up her wrist, kneading with both hands. Her limbs look especially white against the bronzing fabric. “Don't think I can carry a buck yet, but there's gotta be some small game around. Saw some rabbit tracks near the crawl space, might even catch us some dinner there. Tomorrow I can go farther out—“

She says something sharply, under her breath, that he doesn't quite catch. His hands still against her, cradling her between them. He leans over so his side is pressed snuggly to lower back.

“What'd you say?”

“Don't.”

“You haven't eaten—“

“Don't,” Beth whispers. She closes her eyes. A tear tracks through the grime and gore on her cheeks.

“Please don't leave me.”

Daryl blinks sharply; chews his lower lip. She doesn't move as he sets the bowl on the floor and finally unlaces his boots; it's only the gentle palm on the small of her back that prompts her to scootch forward, give him the room the slide in behind her. He supports himself on his elbow and looks down at her—eyelashes nearly translucent in the afternoon light, cheeks sunken and sucked to the bone. He takes the rag and leans across her, slots her shoulder under her arm so it's more an embrace than not; runs the rag through the tear tracks, clearing the blood, making the pale pink skin shine like snow.

When he's cleaned as much as he can reach he settles down, stretching an arm under her neck and sliding the other across her stomach, pulling her in tightly. His wound presses painfully against a spring in the sofa, and her hair is rank and greasy against his face and mouth. Her body is warm, and only trembles a little. Her gasp is soft when he slips his hand under her shirt to press the skin of her stomach, hovering like a question until her palm presses his knuckles through her shirt. He slides in snugly against her heat, beating, blushing, alive, holding her against him, just holding.

He feels it in his whole body when she speaks.

“Don't leave me, Daryl.”

“I won't, baby girl; I won't.”

 


	5. Drift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pacific Rim AU

"You felt it, didn’t you? We’re drift compatible."

Daryl looks up from the machinery he’d been tinkering with to get the thoughts of their fight out of his mind. It could barely be called a fight, truth be told - more like a ballet, or the dance of electricity along a brain stem, or the tingle that runs the length of his spine as he shrinks under her gaze. 

"Don’t matter," he mutters, wiping grease off on his apron and turning to return a wrench.

"It doesn’t matter? Marshall Grimes told me he ain’t never seen anything like us. You’re gonna throw that away? Outta what, shame?"

Daryl’s head jerks up, his spine tightening. Beth fights the step back she wants to take; she stands her ground, blinking slowly, collapsing his gaze and sucking him in.

"The fuck I gotta be ashamed of?" he growls.

"I know you wanted it to be Michonne," Beth says. "And it should have been. If anyone could save the world, it’d be you and her. But tough toenails to that, because you got me. You’re stuck with me. And I might not be Michonne or Carol or Maggie—but I made it through training same as they did—got just as many drops, just as many kills, and I ain’t letting you let the world go to shit cause you see me as a burden."

She didn’t expect to say so much, and she’s panting by the time she’s done; somehow in her tirade she’d stepped up to him, as close as she could get without phasing through the work bench. But it’s damn close enough; she feels his hot breath on her face as he exhales hard and slow, blinking like someone’d just turned on the light.

"That what you think?" he asks hoarsely.

"It’s what I know," Beth says. 

He stares at her a few more moments, then begins to shake his head. Beth’s chin comes down a bit as they stand there, silent and still but for the wagging of his neck.

"That ain’t it."

"What is it then?"

"Beth, I–" Daryl ducks his head, wrings his ever-present red rag in his hands. "You deserve better’n me," he finally says, looking up into her eyes. "Was my dumb ass got Merle killed, and I ain’t gonna let you… that ain’t gonna be you. You’ll find someone else."

It’s Beth’s turn to shake her head. “Daryl…” After a moment she rounds the workbench so she can stand right in front of him, grasp his hands in hers to still their worrying. She ducks her head until he meets her gaze; with the steadiness of her hands, she holds him there. “I’ve never felt that before, what I felt with you,” she says, low, unblinking. “It was like I was weightless, floating above all my cares and worries like a balloon on the breeze just cause you looked at me like I mattered. And I know you felt it too. I  _know_  it.”

He worries his lower lip with his teeth. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t deny it either. She knows by the weight of his hands, surrendered in hers, that he doesn’t deny it.

"We can save the  _world_ , Daryl. Us two, you and me.”

"What if I fuck up?" he asks, smaller than she’s ever heard him, and it tugs her in like a toy boat on a string, bringing her arms around his waist and her head to his suddenly thundering heart.

"Then I’ll be there to fix you," Beth says. He goes silent again. She closes her eyes, waiting, hoping… and then she feels it. The barest brush of his hand on her forearm, the curve of his wrist—and then his palm cupped around her elbow, curved along her sleeve like a question.

She pulls back and looks in his eyes; deep inside, the drums of war are rising again. “You’re a good soldier, a good man.” She doesn’t even think before reaching up and brushing a lock of hair out of his eyes. His hand on her elbow tightens. Slow, secret, swelling, Beth smiles. “Drift with me, Daryl Dixon. I wanna fight monsters with you.”


	6. Can You Fill It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pacific Rim AU. Everyone expected rookie Beth to chase the rabbit during her first drift; they all expected her to fail. But in the end, it's Daryl who falls to pieces, and Beth who has to pick him up.

Beth comes to him, afterwards. He knew she would.

He had been in her head after all.

She finds him facedown on one of the blue mats in the gym, arms pulsing and breath heaving as he does pushups, shoving the ground like he's angry at it, like he's giving his past what it deserves. And it  _deserves_ , Beth now knows—knows almost better than she knows her own pains, the scar Daryl had never seen until he watched him as herself slicing through the veins. It's odd, the drift, the way it tastes the skin, stretches it beyond the power that one human could bear. You can only be pulled so far before you snap, Beth knows; but having someone snug alongside, cocooned in the stretched skin like a shared sweater—it hurts, still, but it's bearable. It doesn't break.

Daryl looks on the edge of collapse as she watches him—face growing slowly redder, arms developing a sheen, breaths growing shorter and choppier. But he keeps going. She knows he knows she's there, just as she knew to take the right corridor instead of the left, to ascend the stairs instead of descend, to come to this doorway and find him beating his own life into the floor.

Eventually, Beth walks over, sliding gracefully to the ground and crossing her legs, right in front of him where his long hair flicks drops of sweat at her chest. She sits quiet, tranquil, until Daryl's arms suddenly tremble and he collapses, spent; he lies on the mat, taking deep heaving breaths, shivering with the force of his heartbeats.

She's handing him his water bottle before he asks for it. He makes a noise she accepts as thanks as he levers himself to his haunches with a groan and guzzles at the bottle, water surging in pulses down his throat until the vessel is empty. He closes his eyes and sits there; Beth would almost think he's meditating, but for one who knows Daryl as she does, that's a damn silly thought. She knows how fast his mind races, how words and sensations and information coarse through the brain beneath that shaggy hair, constantly analyzing, constantly questioning, buzzing away like a deadly swarm of bees. It's what makes him a good fighter—but it's also the cause of the bags beneath his eyes, the slump of his shoulders when no one's looking. Except for her. He doesn't care if she looks.

He glances around the room now, reminding himself that it's empty, then settles into a pose that mirrors hers; he plants his elbows on his knees and buries his face in his hands. She can still see his pulse racing in the hollow of his throat.

"You're gonna hurt yourself doin' that, Daryl," she says; his hands jerk a little, like he's surprised to hear her voice through the push of sound waves and not the pulsing of neurons. "Who'd save the world then?"

"Ain't gonna save no world like this," he mumbles into his hands. Were it anyone else listening, they would not have understood him.

But Beth understood. She understands. More than he knows. 

"It isn't your fault, Daryl," she says quietly.

"I've drifted dozens of times before," he says, frustration lacing his words, "I did sims after Grimes brought me in again, it ain't Merle. I dunno..." He shakes his head. He looks at her, and he looks  _young_. "What do I do, Beth?"

Beth's breath catches at the  _need_  in his eyes; and at the same time, the utter trust. He isn't upset that she saw those memories—the angry man striding down the thin aisle of a trailer, belt in hand; the post by the woods flecked with Daryl's own blood; the smell of the ashes of his burned-up mother—he isn't upset she saw them. He's upset that he isn't good enough. He's upset that he failed.

"You don't give up," she says firmly. Daryl bites his lip and she reaches forward to grasp on of his sweaty hands, not hesitating to twine their fingers together. She ducks her head to catch his eyes, make sure he's listening. "You're the strongest person I know Daryl." He opens his mouth to object and she speaks over him. "You  _are_. And it ain't just cause you took down all those kaiju, or got Gipsy back to shore on your own. Ain't even cause all that... terror, in your childhood, didn't kill you. It's cause you went through the worst the world could throw at you and you  _stayed a good person_. You could'a let the world burn, turned around and never come back. But you didn't. You  _stayed_. You  _fought_. You saved  _me_ , Daryl Dixon." She squeezes his hand. "So don't you dare go thinking you aren't strong, not after one failed drift." She grins. "No matter how Dale is going to have your ass for frying all his cables."

His mouth quirks, barely, and she considers it a victory. He looks at her solemnly, then, hand holding tight.

"If you say so, I'll believe it." Beth doesn't feel the flush that spreads across her cheeks, but Daryl sees it. "But ya got it wrong, Beth."

"What this time?" she teases.

"I didn't save nothing. I did my job, 's all. You're the hero. You're the one's gonna save the world."

Beth smiles, squeezing his hand again. "Not without you, I'm not."

"Damn straight," Daryl mutters. She knows, then, that he'll be ok.

Daryl pauses, thinking, then looks at her through his bangs; it makes Beth's breath catch, those eyes. "All that stuff that happened, what it did to me—that hole ain't there no more. Cause of you. You filled it, Beth Greene."

Beth knows she's flushing now, but she doesn't mind; he saw, after all, the ways she'd imagined him, the things they'd do—there are no secrets in the drift.

Between them, at least, there are no secrets out of it either.


	7. Dizzy Daffodils

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth is sick. So are a lot of other people, but so is Beth. Daryl tries to make her feel better.

He’s running for his life when he sees them. 

Daffodils. He knows they are daffodils because there was a patch that sprang up every year behind their house, the one his mama burnt down. He remembers how she loved those flowers. Sat and drank in the shitty folding chair in the kitchen so she could look out and see them, shimmering like gold in a whirlpool of rust. One year, before Merle told Daryl it was a pussy move to care about such things, his art teacher assigned the class to draw someone they love with something the person loves. The teacher didn’t appreciate his drawing of the day he found Merle and Cathy Reynolds in the bushes together. So the next thing he drew was Mama and her daffodils. It was a shitty picture, basically a stick figure with yellow blobs floating around like tufts of golden cotton—but when he showed it to Mama she cried and hugged him and didn’t drink for a whole day.

It’s been a long time since his mama and a long time since art class and although those things float through his head as he runs from the 20-odd walkers chasing him, Mrs. Dixon isn’t the image that pops into his mind.

Beth is sick. Well, a lot of people are sick, there’s some sort of bug going around the prison that leaves the person vomiting and bedridden. Nonlethal with enough fluids, but when he’d walked into Beth’s cell looking for Judith and found her grey-faced and throwing up in a pail, he walked right back out and looked for Rick and told him he was going on a run to make these damn people feel better.

Beth is sick. A lot of people are sick, but so is Beth. Her voice is scratchy from the acid and her palms wet and the meds he’s picked up should at least help her sleep.

But then he sees the daffodils. And he remembers his mama loving them. And he remembers the pictures the kids at the prison drew for Beth, ladybugs and daisies and sunshine—and he pictures her face as he brings a little real sunshine into her life and suddenly his already over-heating body is flushed all over. 

So he does something stupid.

He gets away clean, if just barely, and if Zach’s pissed about all the new scratches on his car Daryl will go back out and find him some fucking paint.

It’s past midnight when he gets back to the prison (he passed a doe on the edge of the woods and spent hours tracking it down, thinking Beth will be mighty hungry when she recovers—and so will everyone else, so Zach can deal with finding some new upholstery too). Hershel’s asleep and he figures the people can wait for the meds till morning; but when he’s headed for the stairs and he passes Beth’s cell and sees the flicker of candlelight through the curtain, he pauses. Cocks his ear. Then slowly steps forward and draws the curtain aside.

She’s fallen asleep with a book across her chest—he recognizes it as the romance novel got her and Carol squealing when they dug it out of the library—propped up on two pillows and heaped in blankets. Even in sleep, she looks exhausted. 

After a few moments staring at her chest—to make sure she’s breathing—Daryl tiptoes inside.

The trash bin is full of vomit, so he takes it to the kitchen to rinse out, giving it a good scrub, before heading back. She’s still in the same position, breathing heavily through her nose. As carefully as he can, Daryl pulls the book from her limp hands, sets the lace that broke off his boots inside to hold her place. He lays down a serving of the medicine and a glass of water, arranging them so she’s sure to see them first thing. Then he pulls out the flowers. They got squished in his pack, but not too badly—you can still tell what they are, and when he gives them a sniff it smells like something she might like. So he leaves them on her desk, and after a few minutes making sure they’re placed just right, he heads off for bed.

In the morning he’s too nervous to eat. He snaps at Carol when she asks if he’s getting sick too. He instantly regrets it, but he can’t bring himself to apologize; his foot taps rapidly on the floor, his hands caught between his knees, as he stares at Beth’s fluttering curtain. 

He goes to take a shit and when he gets back she’s there, forcing down a few spoonfuls of porridge. Trying not to look at her, Daryl reaches into Judy’s playpen and picks the girl up, sits at the table to feed her her applesauce. He’s so busy making those airplane noises she likes so much, it takes a while to notice Beth is watching him.

"What?" he asks, cheeks red.

Her lips are pale and her skin bloodless but she still smiles. “I woke up with flowers in my room. I thought they’d be from Zach but he had no idea what I was talking about. Any idea who’d wanna get me flowers?”

"Maybe he’s lying," Daryl mumbles, trying to feed Judy while simultaneously looking at the floor and ends up smooshing the whole spoonful on her cheek.

"Hmm, I don’t think so. He was too busy interrogating people, trying to find out who got blood all over his car." He isn’t looking at her but she’s looking at him and his face is hot as he dabs at Judy’s cheeks, not even smiling when she babbles at him because Beth is standing and she’s walking over to him and he puts his hands under Judy’s armpits to pass her over—

They’re cool, her lips, when they brush his cheek, and Daryl feels like he’s plunged beneath an icy waterfall because all of a sudden his limbs can’t move. It’s no more than a brush, no more than the wind from a butterfly’s wing—but when she pulls back she’s still standing close and smiling and how did he ever look at her and not think her the prettiest thing he’s ever seen?

"You’re a real sweetheart, Daryl Dixon."

He stares after her as she walks back to her cell; he continues to stare at the drawn curtain until Judy starts trying to shove her fingers in his mouth. He grimaces at her, muttering “women” before standing to put her back in her playpen.

And if Daryl’s the next person to catch the bug and he wakes up to daffodils of his own; well, the dents give Zach’s car character anyway.


	8. What's a Brother For?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl really needs more friends.

“The fuck you doing calling me, Darylena, it’s fuckin’ three in the morning!”

“It’s three in the _afternoon_ , Merle,” Daryl says, holding his phone on his shoulder as he rifles through the three shirts in his closet. “Listen, I need your advice on something.”

“Long as it ain’t that piece turned your balls inside out,” Merle grumbles. Daryl hesitates, and Merle groans. “Fuck my tits, boy, you bring shame on the Dixon name.”

“Will ya just listen!” Daryl shouts. ”I need your help.”

“The fuck for?”

“Let’s see,” Daryl says. “She wants me to come over in two hours. I got fuck-all to wear, my aftershave expired three years ago, and the only wine I know comes from a box. There ain’t no fucking flower shops open in December and I’m about to fuckin’ bust a nut thinking about bein’ alone with her so I could really use your fuckin’ help!”

Daryl’s mouth closes with a snap. The room’s spinning a bit. 

Merle is silent for so long that Daryl pulls his phone from his shoulder to check he didn’t hang up. He waits a few beats before leaning his forehead on the wall and closing his eyes.

“Merle, I ain’t fuckin’ around here. This girl, she’s… I ain’t gonna fuck this up. Not this one.” Daryl waits, breathing heavily. “I don’t got no one else to call,” he says.

He hears Merle’s breathing now, at least, rough and asthmatic in the receiver. Daryl grits his teeth, sighing heavily.

“Fine, I’ll fuckin’ do it on my own—”

“Gimme 20 minutes.”

Daryl straightens. “What?” 

“You fuckin’ deaf, boy? Gimme 20 minutes. Got some tequila somewhere in this shithole, we’ll finish it off and hash this out, a’right?”

“Thank you, Merle,” Daryl breathes.

“Fuckin’ pansy,” he mutters. “Y’all better name every single one’a your kids after me.”

In that moment, Daryl’s willing to.


	9. Funny Honey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth doesn't expect much for Valentine's day. Of course, Daryl delivers.

“Maggie, will ya get the door, I’m not ready yet!” Beth yells, trying to do up her shirt and put her shoes on at the same time. 

It’s her first Valentine’s Day with Daryl and she’s a little freaked out. Not because there’s anything inherently freaky about him, or their relationship—once she got her family over the age difference, the freak factor of this one is next to none. And she’s thankful for it. But it also means that the freak-outs, when they come, are this much worse.

She surveys herself in the mirror. Skinny jeans, plaid shirt, converse and stud earrings and a little bit of blush. Daryl hadn’t told her what to wear; all he said was that he was taking her out before he distracted her by sucking on her neck. She knows him. She knows this is what he’s expecting, that anything more would freak him out. And it’s not a bad look, she thinks, surveying herself; she looks fresh and cute and she’s gotten Daryl growling for her with less. He’s probably the easiest man to please that she’s ever met, and most days she thanks Jesus for that. Today, though, she can’t help but think of the little black dress she bought on a whim, hanging in the back of her closet.

 _Maybe next time_ , she thinks, smoothing the shirt across her hips.  _When he’s a little more comfortable. If he likes that kinda thing._

“Beth!” Maggie yells from the living room. “It’s Daryl, get your butt out here!”

“In a minute!” Beth yells back. She spritzes herself a few times with perfume, double checks her purse, and with a deep breath walks out.

What she sees stops her in her tracks.

For a second she would swear an alien has inhabited her boyfriend’s body. An alien with impeccable hygiene. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Daryl so  _clean_.

She’s never seen him in a tux, either. Not even in her head.

“Hey,” Daryl says nervously, breaking what Beth realizes has become an uncomfortably long silence. She realizes he’s blushing furiously; a familiar sight, if with a little more of his chest covered than normal. She sees Maggie sneaking out of the room out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t pay that much attention.

“Daryl, I…  _wow_.” Beth says. “I didn’t expect… where did you get it?”

“One’a Merle’s honeys works at Lord and Taylor’s, hooked me up.” Daryl shifts on his feet. “Can’t take you nowhere fancy,” he says. “I just thought… might be nice to make ourselves fancy for it?”

He looks so nervous she’s worried he’s going to melt into the floor. So she smiles. Widely, brilliantly, she smiles, then walks forward to throw her arms around his neck and draw him down for a deep kiss.

When she draws back, he’s still red, but looks more sheepish than embarrassed. Beth touches his jaw (smooth as a baby’s, Jesus lord), smiling warmly.

“Ya think Denny’s will believe we’re hitched and give us free pancakes?”

Daryl barks out a surprised laugh, ducking his head and smiling through his bangs. “Only if you got somethin’ to match.”

“I have just the thing,” Beth says. She half-turns to head back to her room, then stops; pivots on her heel, and kisses him again, long and sweet.

“You don’t have anything to worry about, Daryl,” she whispers against his lips. “This is already the best Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had.”


	10. Crystalline Clear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl is a janitor at the music school. He hears singing late one night...

Daryl curses Merle with every sweep of the mop. If the asshole hadn’t been peddling on the wrong side of town, the feds never would have gotten on his tail, Daryl would never’ve needed to take the fall for him, and he wouldn’t be working no rich-kid private college to make a judge happy. He knows he could have ended up in worse spots: If President Grimes hadn’t vouched for him, he’d probably be picking litter off the highway. He’s grateful to her, he is; she doesn’t owe him nothing, and neither does her husband, but they always seem to be looking out for him. He doesn’t get it, but it could be worse. 

So he’s grateful. But that doesn’t make pushing his mop and bucket down abandoned halls, lit only by flickering florescence, any less creepy.

He’s in such an unsettled state of mind, it takes him a few moments to understand what he’s hearing. 

Frowning, Daryl pulls out of the classroom he was heading into, wheeling down the hall until he gets to the one open door. He leaves his mop and bucket a few steps away; pads the last few steps on silent feet. He peers through the door.

There is a piano. There is a girl. And she is singing.

“ _We need some light. First of all, we need some light. You can’t sit here in the dark, and all alone, it’s a sorry sight. It’s just you and me. We’ll live, you’ll see,_ dadadada, Zach and Haley sing, dadada,  _Day after day, give me clouds, and rain and gray. Give me pain, if that’s what’s real, it’s the price we pay—”_  

Her voice slides onto a sour note, and her playing falters. She stops, slamming her hands on the keys. She huffs out a frustrated breath and rubs at her eyes.

“Dammit, Greene, pull yourself together,” she mutters.

“Wasn’t that bad.”

Daryl curses himself the moment the words leave his mouth. The girl spins on her stool so quickly her ponytail slaps her on the cheek. The air between them rings with silence. Daryl stands guiltily in the doorway as she looks him over.

“What?” she asks.

“I just—” Daryl stammers, the back of his neck heating. “Ya sounded real good. I thought so, anyway.”

She frowns, glancing at the piano. When she looks back at him, her eyes are wide. She bites her lip and twists her hands in her lap.

“Ya really think it sounded ok?” she asks.

"Yeah.” He scuffles his feet on the floor. “S’pretty.”

“I’m just real nervous,” she says, turning more towards him. “The dress rehearsal is tomorrow, in front of the faculty and everything, and I can’t stop messing up.” She bites her lip again, seeming to decide something. “Will you help me?”

“Me?” Daryl asks.

“Yeah, just—sing the other parts? I tried to get the others to stay but they all had plans.” She smiles ruefully. “We’re probably the only people in the state of Georgia in school on a Friday night.”

“I don’t sing,” Daryl says.

“Just read ‘em then.”

“I got work—”

“It’ll only take a minute.” When Daryl still looks doubtful, she raises her hand, smallest finger extended. “Pinky swear.”

Daryl hesitates a few more moments, then nods and steps slowly into the room. She flashes him a brilliant smile before whirling back to the piano. Daryl pauses in the center of the room, transfixed, suddenly, by the way the harsh lighting falls on her hair. She clearly hasn’t washed it in a few days and it’s half fallen out of her ponytail, but something in the fluorescence has her lighting up like a moonbeam. 

Then she’s turning again, shooting him an encouraging look. She scooches to the edge of the bench, patting the seat beside her. “C’mon.”

Chin ducked, Daryl takes the last few steps and slides onto the bench, holding his thigh tight so he doesn’t touch her. She doesn’t seem to have any such reservations; she relaxes into his space as if they’ve done this a hundred times. Daryl swallows as he catches a waft of her scent, realizes what he must smell like after clearing garbage all night.

She doesn’t comment, though; just glances at him with a smile and a blush before laying her hands on the keys. She plays a few bars, then points at the sheet music. 

“I sing the highlighted parts, ‘k? You just read the rest of it alongside the music.”

“Just read, right? I don’t gotta sing?”

“Not this time.” She winks at him, lips stretched across her white teeth. She turns back to the piano, then; lays her fingers on the keys; takes a deep breath, and begins.

She sounds even better, up close like this, and Daryl wonders what kind of girl she is, to be worrying she isn’t good enough. He’s never heard a voice this good, this pure, this lovely. He ignores the vision of Merle rolling his eyes; ignores the reminder at the back of his head that if anyone finds a felon this close to a student he’s liable to get his balls chopped off. He ignores all of it. What he doesn’t ignore is the way her cheeks flush prettily under his attention, how her mouth rolls and purses to form the words; how her fingers dance across the keys, soft, lilting, floating on thin air. He misses his first cue, he’s so enraptured. 

But she doesn’t seem to mind. Just bumps his shoulder with hers, teases him till his neck goes redder. Continues until a smile peeks its way, unbidden, beneath the edges of his cheeks. She says he looks nice like that, smiling, and Daryl nearly leaves then and there; but her small hand lands on his wrist, thumb sliding to the pulse point, and he decides there isn’t anywhere he needs to go.


	11. Obtuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth loves him, she does; but sometimes Daryl can be thicker than frozen molasses.

It almost feels like his own skin is being ripped away as Daryl untangles himself from Beth on the couch, unable to resist swiping a hand under her shirt across her smooth stomach as he kisses her lips.

“I’lll see you tomorrow, yeah?” he whispers.

“Maybe you don’t have to wait,” she murmurs back. Daryl pauses, frowning. Beth pulls back a little, and he sees her cheeks have flared red again; not as red as they were when he had his hand beneath her bra, but red enough. “You don’t  _need_  to go.”

“Thought you had work tomorrow.”

“I do, so?”

“You said you can’t sleep if you watch a movie after nine. We don’t have time for another before then.”

Beth blinks a few times, frowning. She puts her hand on his bicep, rubbing up and down. It’s distracting enough that he misses what she says.

“Huh?”

“I  _said_ , I don’t wanna watch a movie.”

Daryl furrows his eyebrows. “TV, then? Still ain’t finished with the Sopranos—”

“ _Daryl_ ,” Beth says. His lips snap shut. “I’m asking you to stay the night.”

“Oh,” Daryl says, finally understanding. “Ok. You could’a just said that, you know.”

“I don’t mean like a  _sleepover_ ,” Beth says. Her cheeks have almost returned to their normal color. She sounds exasperated.

“Then what do you mean?”

Beth bites her lip, glancing down his body. Then before he can stop her, her hand has trailed from his arm to his hip to the front of his pelvis to land on a suddenly  _very_  interested part of his anatomy.

Her cheeks are bright red again, but her hand is firm as it rubs him. His knees nearly buckle, and he stares at her open-mouthed.

“You ain’t saying—”

“I am,” Beth says. She gives him another squeeze that has him biting his lip before she pulls away. Before he can feel too disappointed, she’s slithering down between his body and the couch, landing on her knees on the floor. She looks up at him with her wide blue eyes, and brings her hands to his buckle. “I very much am.”

“Oh,” Daryl says, standing frozen as she looks at him. Just looks. As if she’s waiting for instruction. “Well,” Daryl says, shrugging as nonchalantly as he can. “Don’t got nowhere better to be.”

Beth’s smile grows like the Cheshire cat’s. Slowly, she scratches her nails across the fabric; runs his zipper down.

Suffice it to say, she doesn’t make it to work the next morning.


	12. Making Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Daryl share an air mattress. Beth is not happy about it.

“Would you quit your fuckin’ rolling, I’m getting seasick here.”

Beth huffs out a breath before flopping down onto her back, sending the mattress bouncing again. They can barely fit on the thing together as it is; with Beth’s back making it difficult for her to get comfortable, Daryl’s half hanging off the edge, one leg pressed to the floor to keep him from falling. Now that she’s settled he pulls it back under the covers, rubbing it against his own calf to warm it up.

“It was your idea to save money by sharing a hotel room. We  _could’a_ been perfectly comfortable next door.”

“I ain’t the one dead-set on a crib costs more than I make in a week.”

“It has childlock!” Beth says a little too loudly. Maggie groans from the bed she’s sharing with Glenn, and Beth hushes, mollified. Her glare isn’t any less fierce. “If we’d just told them I’m pregnant, they’d’ve given us the bed anyway.”

Daryl shifts, a movement exaggerated by the rolling mattress. 

“Thought you were ok with that,” he says quietly.

Beth’s expression instantly softens, and she reaches forward to cup his cheek. “Babe, you know I am, I’m just—” She takes a deep breath, shaking her head. “I’m just tired, I guess. Tired and hormonal and horny and—”

“Horny?” Daryl grabs her around the waist and tugs her into him, feels the slight bulge of her stomach on his. “Ya didn’t say anything about  _horny._ ”

“Daryl, they’re right—oh,” Beth says as Daryl begins to kiss her neck, trailing from shoulder to ear and back down, swirling his tongue against her pulse point. 

"That a yes, then?” He slides a hand up under her pajama shirt to caress a breast.

“We can’t,” she says weakly, reaching out to clutch his arm.

Daryl smiles devilishly, rolling her nipple between his fingers as she attempts to stifle her mewls. “Ya know what I think? I think we—”

“Can you horndogs cut it out for just one night?” Beth and Daryl freeze at Glenn’s voice, muffled like he’s pressed into his pillow.

“Sorry Glenn,” Beth stage-whispers, biting her lip as Daryl continues to grin, running his thumb over her aching nipple.

“Better be,” he grumbles.

They wait a few moments until Glenn’s snores start up again, Daryl stroking Beth’s nipple all the while. When they’re sure he’s asleep, Beth presses her face into Daryl’s shoulder, laughing silently.

“You ever think  _Glenn’d_  be the one asking people to keep it down?”

Daryl smirks, kissing her neck again. “Told you you’re shit at being quiet.”

“Am not!” Beth gasps, pretending to look affronted as Daryl finally moves his hand from her breast, wrapping his arm around her back and tugging her close. 

“Girl, you’d wake a deaf elephant in a hurricane.”

“What does that even mean?” she asks, slinging her own arm over his side. 

Daryl’s face softens into something less giddy, with a little more weight. Beth’s breath catches in her throat. She bites her lip as he swallows. His arm moves from around her waist to slide around to her front, drift across her swelling stomach.

“Means I love ya,” he says. “Every bit of you.”

He continues looking at her solemnly as she smiles, brings up a hand to stroke his cheek. “I love you too, Daryl,” she says. “So much. In fact,” she whispers, leaning closer until their noses brush, “I love you enough to tell you that if you think we’re spending one more night on an air mattress, I’m selling that ring.”

She blinks at him sweetly, batting her lashes, and Daryl bursts into laughter, spraying her mouth with spit as he doubles up, pulling her to him again. Beth hugs him back, laughing herself. 

She squeaks when Glenn’s pillow hits her in the head. It only makes Daryl laugh harder.


	13. Wedding Bells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth has been his sister, legally, for six months.
> 
> It’s been about five months and 29 days since he last really saw her as one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not related to my multi-chaptered step-siblings AU, "Almost Fine"; just a little drabble.

“Please, Daryl!” she begs.

“Beth, I ain’t doin’ it,” he hisses.

It’s times like these that Daryl hates his life. Done up in a tux, hair combed, weird-smelling shit slathered on his neck. Not to mention backed into a corner, literally and metaphorically, by Beth fucking Greene.

 _My_ sister, _Beth Greene_ , Daryl thinks desperately, looking down at her wide blue eyes as she steps even closer, her scent (which isn’t weird at all) wafting into his nose.  _My sister Beth. Sister. Sister, sister, sister—_

She is his sister, yes; has been for six months. 

It’s been about five months and 29 days since he last really saw her as one.

“Please,” she says again, grabbing his sleeve with both hands. The movement brings her elbows together, scrunching her shoulders and giving him a good view down the front of her dress. He breathes out harshly, squeezing his eyes shut. Beth yanks on him until he opens them again. “No one except Aaron and Eric knows we’re related,” she says. “I promise it will be  _fine_.”

“I ain’t gonna help you act like a fucking pussy over this asshole,” he says, yanking his sleeve out of her grip. “Why the fuck you even care what he thinks?”

Beth sighs out harshly, finally taking a step back. She crosses her arms, looking at the floor. 

“Screw you, you don’t get it,” she mutters.

“Damn right I don’t,” Daryl says.

“Please, if you just—ugh!” Beth stamps her foot, stumbling a little as her cream pump sinks into the carpet. He thinks she’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen. 

She rights herself quickly and scowls, assuming from his expression that he’s laughing at her. Whatever is on his face quickly fades under her glare.

“Maybe you’ve never been rejected by someone you cared about; heck, maybe you never let anyone close enough to care at all.” Daryl feels his spine tightening and then she’s, oh no, she’s stepping closer again, all the way to his chest, in his face, close enough he can see her pores through her makeup. “But I have, ok? And seeing that person you care about always there, just out of your reach… it hurts, ok. It hurts a lot. So call me a… pussy, however much you want. I don’t care because I know I’m not. I’m just hurt, and I want to feel better.” This time she takes his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers before he can protest, and fuck is he screwed. “It’s just one dance, Daryl. One dance. Then we can go home and you can forget you ever invited me here.”

 _I don’t want to forget_ , Daryl thinks. And he doesn’t. He doesn’t ever want to forget how she looked when she came out of her room, smiling shyly in her strapless white dress, standing like a Botticelli in the desert with her collarbones spread like wings. He doesn’t want to forget the way she leaned into him when Aaron and Eric said their vows; doesn’t want to forget glancing at her to see the tears rolling down her face; doesn’t want to forget screwing up his courage and pulling her hand onto his knee, holding her warm and close as he pretended not to see her grateful smile. He doesn’t even want to forget this, his goddess of a step-sister standing in front of him, begging him to dance. 

He’d throw himself off a bridge before he forgets any of it.

“I don’t dance,” he says weakly.

“You don’t have to! Just sway a little and I’ll do the rest.” She bites her lip. Her eyes dart between his and her nose scrunches up just the tiniest bit and he knows he never had a chance.

“Alright,” he grumbles. She squeals and throws her arms around his neck, pushing him backwards into the wall with a grunt. “Jesus christ, ain’t  _that_  big a deal.”

The hug ends much sooner than he would like, but her expression makes up for it; grateful and triumphant and  _happy_ , like he’s given her the world by agreeing to this.

“It is, Daryl. From you it is.” He doesn’t have time to decode what she means before her fingers are threading through his again, and she’s dragging him towards the ballroom.


	14. In Her Mother's Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even in a world once thought dead, the days of summer come again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking about "Epic (Part II)" by Anäis Mitchell, and this happened. And I like it.

Daryl wakes and Beth is dancing.

Not dancing, per se. There are no pirouettes or leaps or flying spins. It is not an uncommon thing for her to dance while cleaning or cooking or moving about, but this isn't that either. It's something, Daryl thinks, as he untangles himself from the blankets and sits up in bed, looks out the window into the building dawn sun, indescribable.

She has Annie in her arms. Her girl, their little girl, just big enough to walk on tottering feet if Daryl holds her hands. _She looks just like Beth_ , Daryl thinks, as he always does when he sees them side by side; when he wakes at night to Annie's cries and moves from Beth's sleepy eyes to hers. Annie looks like Beth but she looks a little like Daryl too, and he doesn't know why he likes that but he does.

They're dancing. The two of them, out in the garden, Annie balanced on Beth's hip as she sashays and giggles, holding Annie's arms out like they're whisking across a ballroom.

Daryl puts his arms around his knees to watch. Leans his head on the wall, breathes in deep the oncoming scent of summer. It's been two years since anyone's seen the last walker, and the smell of decay is almost gone.

With the window open he smells the flowers; the roses and marigolds and chrysanthemums that Beth planted with Maggie as her belly swelled and swelled; that he never understood until she whispered late at night how her mother did the same with her own sister when Beth was on her way; how it's a good luck, a prayer that things may grow.

Beth hasn't noticed Daryl watching yet, and she moves freely beneath his gaze. She is always free—he goes to the ends of the Earth to make it so—but still; there's a difference about her when she thinks she is unobserved. A fluidity, a lightness, like a few moments more and she would take to the sky. She's giving little jumps now, and Daryl can hear Annie's laughter through the open window, high and tinkling and true.

It's only a few moments, really, before Beth catches him watching. He taught her well, after all, and even these past two years they've kept themselves sharp. Kept each other sharp, the two of them, playing games in the woods that might one day truly be games again, hiding and hunting and pinning each other to trees and rocks until they fell together into the bush. They were reckless, Daryl knows; reckless every time they took each other outside these walls. But it's different out there. It's different to be with her with the reminder of those dangers stuck in his throat; how her scars stand out sharper, her nails bite deeper, the leaves on her clothes and in her hair turn her into something that can't be brought out from under the tres. Can't be conquered, can't be tamed. Even as he held her wrists over her head and sunk in deep, she was the one entering him.

She's still sharp, so she notices him. Pauses in her dancing, although her hips continue to sway. She gazes at him, mouth open and eyes wide, before falling into a smile he can't help but match. She smiles with her whole body, this girl, and even if he can return barely a quirk of his lip, inside he feels it melting him, bit by bit. Every time.

She smiles soft and they watch each other long and it's only when Annie tugs at her hair that Beth turns away; and that is only to approach the rose bush beneath the window, fully in bloom; to pluck one of the blossoms and tuck it into her ponytail, tight and secure.

She'll come inside soon. Daryl doesn't think she's put sunscreen on herself or on Annie yet, so she'll come in. Maybe she's slip her clothes off and lie down with him. With Annie between them—or in her pen. The monitor on just loud enough that they could hear her cries even over Beth's own as she clutches at the sheets, buries her fingers in Daryl's hair.

Daryl doesn't much mind, one way or the other, which option she'll choose; because she'll come in with their baby, carrying summer. She'll dance from the garden and into their house, the blossoms of the rose bush falling in her wake.

Maybe they'll scatter across the floor; maybe they'll shrivel and die and decay.

But they'll hold a truth that once was known: One day, they tangled in a dancing girl's hair while a man watched from an open window. They found, though plucked, that beneath his gaze they only grew.

And as they fall from her hair to the floor and the air and the bed, as they slide through a baby's curious hands while a pair of foreheads kiss above her, they remember that dancing girl; and how, in the days when the world was being born again, they found that girl so, so loved.

 


	15. Warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl returned the night before from a week-long run. He and Beth need to make up for lost time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "shhhh just go to sleep thinking about sleepy bethyl sex"

The heat never worked well in Beth’s room at the farm; some problem with the pipes. Probably easily fixed, but she never wanted to kick up a fuss; plus, she liked the feeling of blankets piled around her, cocooning her in her own warmth.

She isn’t at the farm anymore and gas is too precious to spend on heat, but she rarely goes to bed cold anymore. Doesn’t wake up that way either. Because there’s Daryl. Daryl pressed against her, molded around her back, splayed beneath her body like a second mattress; and he gives off enough heat for ten rooms. She never knew that about him until their winter on the run, one night march when he’d hauled her against him so she didn’t walk into the walker right in front of her nose. He hadn’t said anything to her apology; had killed the walker and moved on without a look. But it stuck with her, how through all those layers of jean and wool, she felt his warmth. 

There’s even more of it now; acres of it; coating her back and slipping along her side and palming her breast, squeezing it softly enough that if she were asleep, she’d sleep through it.

She isn’t asleep.

They both know that, but it’s fun to play along; to murmur sleepily and shift her body, feel his naked cock rise up against her ass. Feel it twitch as she swivels her hips and settles; hear his chuckle, low and deep, sigh into the kiss he presses to her shoulder.

“You wanna?” he rumbles.

She doesn’t waste time with words; lifts her leg sideways into the air, feels his hand immediately between her legs; the sigh he breathes against her skin as he finds her wetness, slips a finger in with ease. She wouldn’t be surprised if some of it is still from the night before, when he’d come home from a week long trip beyond the walls and she rode him until he was begging her to stop, then climbed onto his face and rode that too. The sheets are musty and smell of them and for the first morning in a week she wakes with them warm.

Daryl doesn’t seem awake enough to bother with foreplay; knowing he won’t hurt her, he withdraws his hand, guides his cock inside. They both sigh into the penetration; twin gusts of breath that as they recede pull them together into the vacuum: Daryl’s arm hard and strong across her ribs, his other slipping under her body so he can hold her closer. It’s always what he wants, closer, and it’s always what she’s willing to give; she crosses her arms over his and snuggles back against his chest as he rocks into her.

Warm. Warm behind her, warm in front, the way his massive arms take so much space. Warm inside, his bare cock nestled in her folds, so hard and thick where it spreads her cunt open. The juices spilling from within her as he slides in and not-quite out, keeping as much of himself inside her as possible even as he moves. Even as he fucks her in their morning bed.

“Missed this,” he murmurs, kissing her neck, thumbing a nipple. “Missed you, girl.”

Beth can’t find her voice yet, but she knows he hears her answer; the little whimpers she begins to make as her clit rubs against her squeezed together legs, the gasp she gives when one of his hands moves down and begins to rub her. She keeps her thighs squeezed tight and he has to work for it but soon he has his fingers wedged between her pussy lips just like his cock splits her from the back, finding her nub right above where he stretches her. Touching it, sending fizzling lightning through her limbs. Making her tighten, making him groan, speed up.

“Fuck, Beth,” he breathes, rubbing her in circles, kneading her breast, pressing his face into the back of her neck until sweat builds between then.  _“Fuck.”_

He doesn’t pull out when he comes. He hasn’t for a while, and she closes her eyes to enjoy it; the spill of him inside of her, the way she knows she’ll be leaking milky white, the bit that might stay. Find a home for itself. Begin to grow.

“Love you.”

He lets out a shaky breath as she says it, pausing his ministrations on her clit to catch his breath.

She lets him. She doesn’t rush. They’re warm. They have time.


	16. Filling Up My Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl has never felt like this before, so he knows he's getting sick. Some end of the world disease, probably; or maybe his immune system has finally given up the ghost. 
> 
> Whatever it is, being around Beth only seems to makes it worse. But he still can't quite keep away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a drabble meme where I asked for people to send me a number, then I shuffled my music and counted down the lines of lyrics until I hit that number. This drabble was inspired by the lyrics "filling up my mind," from "Hey Julie" by Fountains of Wayne.

Daryl thinks that he must be coming down with something. The viral disaster at the prison is long past, but that doesn’t mean it can’t resurface. Even the flu or the common cold could be deadly in this world.

But he isn’t so much worried about the prognosis as he is the symptoms. Sweaty palms, hot flashes, a pounding heart beat and a throat so swollen he can’t find it in himself to breathe.

He must have caught it from Beth. It happens sometimes when he thinks of her but when he’s around her it’s worse, so it must be that. Doesn’t matter that she doesn’t seem to be sharing the symptoms. She’s as pleasant as ever—warm, even, especially when he comes to see Judith. She has Judith most of the time so seeing Judith usually means seeing her and she never seems to be suffering like he is.

It isn’t suffering, not really, not compared to all he’s been through, what they’ve all been through—but somehow at the same time it’s worse, because the one person he could blame it on he… can’t. Won’t. Can’t. He doesn’t know. When he tries to get mad at her and ask what the fuck she thinks she’s doing to him she smiles and he forgets to be angry because there go the hot flashes up and down his neck again and his hands get to sweating and it isn’t until he’s back in his cell that he remembers why he was supposed to be angry in the first place.

He’s standing at the door to her cell now, Judith in his arms, watching Beth move about in front of him. He didn’t approach her this time; had been walking on the opposite side of the cell block, along the windows, when she called for him softly. Called his name, and it sounded so nice in her mouth he altered his path before the final syllable had fallen from her lips.

She told him when she handed him Judith to come in, but he can’t make himself step across the threshold. Won’t. Can’t. It doesn’t matter. Just looking at her space and imagining himself in her desk chair or perching on the edge of her bed has his head swimming and he wonders if now is really the best time to have Judith near him.

But it doesn’t matter. Beth called to him and it’s late enough that no one’s gonna be passing that he could pawn the baby off on, and besides, there’s a strange leadening in his feet when he thinks about leaving.

She straightens up from where she’d been bent over Judith’s playpen, using her wrist to push a few loose strands of hair away from her face. She looks at Daryl, smiling apologetically as she strips off her latex gloves, balling them around the soiled toweling in her hand.

“I’m sorry I asked you to do this,” she says for what must be the fifth time. “I know I could'a just put her on the bed or the floor but she’s been crawling so much I can’t look away for a minute. And I saw you walking so…” She trails off, and Daryl’s eyes flick to her mouth as he tongue darts out to wet her lips. “I know you must be on your way somewhere, I can take her now–“

“No,” Daryl says.

Beth freezes mid-step as she had begun to approach him; doesn’t frown at him exactly, but tilts her head, the corner of her mouth twitching.

“I mean… I didn’t mean you can’t spend time with her–“

“No, I…” And there it goes again. The feeling like a fire’s been built on his shoulders and the flames are licking their way up his neck and cheeks, melting his skin from his bones. He clears his throat, looks down at Judith, thinks maybe Beth might be infecting him through his eyes or something. “Playpen’s still wet; you’d have to hold her for a while anyway.”

She takes another step towards him and he has to fight the urge to follow it with a step back.

“I don’t mind holding her,” Beth says, voice soft in the night.

She goes quiet, and Daryl doesn’t look up; focuses on pulling a bit of fluff out of Judith’s hair. Beth did a good job cleaning her up after she pooped through her diaper and stained the playpen; he can’t smell anything on her but clean baby scent, and something else, something she carries around with her that can only originate in this cell.

The smell swirling stronger in his nostrils is the only warning Daryl has before his head jerks up and he finds Beth just in front of him, her feet inside the cell, his without. He swallows heavily and when her palm lands on his bare arm he only just avoids jerking away.

“Well, come in at least,” Beth says, a teasing lilt to her voice. Her hand falls away swiftly but he can still feel the pressure there, as if she’d pressed hard enough to bruise. “Don’t gotta stand out here like a stranger or something.”

Judith shifts in Daryl’s arms and his muscles are so tight he feels like he almost drops her.

He shoves her forward instead, waiting only for Beth to get her hands firmly under the baby’s arms before stepping away, eyes aimed at the ground.

“Gotta check the fences anyway,” he mutters.

He doesn’t pause to check Beth’s expression; stoops to pick up his crossbow and hightails it the fuck out of there, not stopping until he’s gotten the heavy prison door between them.

He collapses against it, legs shaking like he’d run for miles, beads of sweat itching the skin of his forehead. He wipes absently at the discomfort and breathes in deep, hoping the night air will cleanse him of whatever the fuck he’s caught.

It doesn’t help. As soon as he’s got that scent out of his nostrils, he wants it back again. Wants to turn around and go back to Beth’s cell and press his face into her pillow until there’s no way he’ll forget it, ever.

He doesn’t though. Makes a slow lap around the yard, scanning the fences without seeing them. His vision is still blurry but when her face pops up in his mind it’s crystal clear.

He’ll go see Hershel in the morning. Or, no, Carol. Hershel’s been teaching her. She’ll know what’s wrong with him.

He doesn’t want Hershel worrying that his daughter’s getting sick too.


End file.
